Immigrants find their niche in restaurant business

For the Vilariño family, “las vegas” was a term used in their native Cuba for tobacco plantations. “Una vega de tabaco,” Miriam Vilariño said in Spanish. “A tobacco field.” So when they bought their first restaurant in Hollywood nearly 30 years ago, they decided to keep the Las Vegas Cuban Cuisine name that had been used by the former owner, not realizing it was also the popular desert gambling city in the United States.

“We weren’t too Americanized when we started with the business and we didn’t know what it meant,” said Vilariño, one of seven family members in the restaurant chain. “Now you learn that in business the name is key sometimes.”

About 10 years later, they added a logo — featuring a green field — to clarify the Cuban roots of the name.

The restaurants attract Hispanics from all nationalities, “but the American clientele we get is absolutely our joy. It’s almost our pride,” Vilariño said. When they started, Cuban food was not well know in Broward County and customers would often ask the family how they prepared and ate their food, she said.

Now they know. Over the years, their popular Cuban food business has expanded to more than a dozen locations throughout South Florida. Six new Las Vegas Cuban Cuisine restaurants have opened in the past three years, Vilariño said.

The growth of immigrant-owned businesses in South Florida like the Vilariño’s reflects the combination of a diverse population and an entrepreneurial environment where immigrants can thrive, small business experts have said.

“It’s the South Florida recipe,” said Rafael Cruz, regional director of the Florida Small Business Development Center in Broward County. “Immigrants like starting a business and work for themselves rather than do something they don’t like.”

South Florida’s foreign-born population is as high as 51 percent in Miami-Dade County, 31 percent in Broward County and 22 percent in Palm Beach County, based on the most recent Census estimates.

Restaurants are among the most popular type of businesses owned by immi¿ grants, according to recent analysis from the Fiscal Policy Institute, a New York-based research group. A 2012 institute report also noted that the Miami metropolitan area — defined by Miami through Fort Lauderdale and Pompano Beach — had more immigrant business owners than any of the other 25 large metro areas in the nation, such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. The institute used Census survey data from a 5-year period up to 2010 for their analysis.Between 1990 and 2010, the percentage of immigrant business owners in South Florida grew from 35 percent to 45 percent, the research group reported.

The top five countries by birth for immigrant business owners were Mexico, India, Korea, Cuba and China. About 12 percent of immigrant business owners were from Mexico, 6 percent from Korea and 4 percent from Cuba, according to the institute data.

Bok H. An, owner of Soo-Woo Japanese & Korean Steakhouse in Doral, opened three other restaurants last year in diverse South Florida neighborhoods, many eager for authentic ethnic cuisine.

The National Restaurant Association said a desire for authentic ethnic cuisine — from Indian to Korean to Mediterranean — is helping restaurants like An’s gain traction. A “What’s Hot in 2013” survey conducted by the association last fall showed that ethnic-inspired breakfast items were among the top 20 trends for the new year.

Korean food also was among the top 5 “hot” flavors of 2013.

Daniel Morin, a Canadian living in Hollywood who admits he’s just “crazy about Japanese food,” said he has been going to the Soo-Woo restaurant near his home at least once a week since they opened in October.

“Most of the chefs and girls. They know me by name,” Morin said. “It’s a great place to come to.”

An opened his first restaurant — Sakura — in Doral in 1997, featuring Japanese cuisine. Two years later he opened another location in Miami-Dade County, but it closed down due to lack of year-round customers, he said. It was “the wrong place at the wrong time,” An said.

He focused instead on remodeling and enlarging Sakura, revamping its menu and changing the restaurant’s name to Soo-Woo Japanese & Korean Steakhouse. Soo-Woo restaurants are now also found in Pembroke Pines and Country Walk, a suburb in Miami-Dade County.

An and Vilariño both consider expanding out of state. Vilariño hopes name recognition will help them succeed in other markets.

“My dad keeps on dreaming of having a restaurant in every metropolitan city of the U.S.,” Vilariño said. “He would love to be in D.C., Los Angeles, New York. That’s why we work so hard.”